Strong Female Lead

Netflix looks at your watch history and then suggests movies and shows for you based on what you've binged. And one of the categories always suggested for me is "Strong Female Lead." Anyone who knows me would not be surprised to hear this since I have a minor obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyway, I have found in the past few years that this is also true of books I gravitate towards.

This summer I discovered a delightful series called the Veronica Speedwell novels by Deanna Rayburn. I stumbled across the series after I read her Killers of a Certain Age - a novel about retired assassins who had to navigate through a male-dominated world and still hold on to their womanhood. Excellent read - murder, hilarity, and strong women.

Anyway, this introduced me to Deanna Rayburn who has created a delightful Victorian England world where a lapidarist (butterfly hunter) lives by her own rules and solves mysteries. What endeared her to me was a quote towards the beginning of the principal novel, "Men can be as intelligent and practical as women, if they try." And I was hooked. There is nothing I enjoy more than empowered women empowering women. Veronica Speedwell challenges the pleasantries of 1887 London through using hairpins as weapons, wearing pants, and speaking her mind. Throughout the series, her partner in crime, Revelstoke “Stoker” Templeton-Vane is constantly being asked to "control" her. When asked to get her to discontinue her involvement in one such mystery he says, "I cannot even get her to stay in the house, you think I can get her to leave the country." This is the type of woman I want to read about. The kind that cannot be moved to do the sensible thing, the reasonable thing, the expected thing. But the kind that will challenge and do the best thing, the right thing, the brave thing.

And ultimately, this is the kind of woman I strive to be. One that does not do what I'm told, but do what is best. To be a woman who is motivated by my own desires and not those that society insists I have. I want to be my own Strong Female Lead.